


a love there is no cure for

by jokeperalta



Category: Poldark (TV 2015)
Genre: :), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Neighbours AU, as is caroline but it's not in her POV so we don't know it, but really it's just their first meeting in a modern setting, dwight is instantly smitten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 22:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8508841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jokeperalta/pseuds/jokeperalta
Summary: A new neighbour moves in opposite Dwight. She's extremely inconvenient.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Carolight Fic and Fanwork week day 2-- AU/Modern AU on fuckyeahdwightcaroline (which I run-- self plug!)
> 
> Title is from 'I Think I Love You' by The Partridge Family which is the best song ever. 
> 
> let me know what you think!

Dwight's routine of bashing his alarm clock silent and bolting upright in bed  in order to get ready for whatever unsociable shift he's working at the hospital is so ingrained in him at this point that it's his immediate reaction to being awoken in any way.

 Thus it takes him a good twenty seconds to parse that his alarm is actually silent because it's hours before he has to get up and the thing that woke him is insistent knocking on the front door of his flat. By the time he's blearily found his way to his door, the knocking has become all-out banging and Dwight rips the door open just to make the noise stop.

Uninterrupted sleep is an extremely rare commodity in his life. He doesnt know who is forcing him to be out of bed at this ungodly time of night, but he's already annoyed.

The woman on the other side very nearly falls into him. Dwight doesn't know her but judging by the open door on the other side of his floor she's the new neighbour he'd noticed was moving in to Charlie's old place a few days ago--by the platoon of moving vans parked outside the building that Dwight could hardly believe was only for one person.

"You're a doctor, aren't you?" she demands. She sounds and looks so genuinely panic-stricken that his exhaustion and anger melts away and is quickly replaced by cool-headed professionalism.

"Yes, I am- what's wrong?" he asks.

"I'm sorry, I just didn't know what to do," she says desperately. "It's Horace- he needs help!"

Dwight follows her quickly into her flat, envisioning an elderly relative of hers with heart attack or stroke symptoms. Her flat is lit by a single lamp on top of a pile of unpacked boxes. There's no one in the living room so Dwight expects to be led into a bedroom but instead she kneels down next to an elegant looking chaise lounge. He looks closer and realises she's cradling the head of a pug gently between her hands.

"Horace," she murmurs. "Are you okay, my darling?"

Dwight stops moving so fast he practically sprains something. He barely knows whether to laugh, cry or just straight up bash his head against the wall till he knocks himself out.

"Your dog," he says. He's impressed at how calm it comes out. He's currently compiling a mental list of potential reactions in his head and a lot of them are anything but. "Horace is... your dog."

"Yes," she says as though it had been obvious all along. "I don't know what's wrong with him, he was fine his afternoon but now he's so lethargic and he seems like he's barely breathing."

It doesn't seem like she's joking but right now it's hard to imagine she's not just playing a long game with him--milking it to the maximum extent till she shouts 'Ha! I got you!'

Perhaps opening himself up to be the butt of a bizarre joke, he attempts at take her at face value. "I'm sorry but... I'm- I'm not sure what you expect me to do. I'm a doctor, not a vet."

She looks at him imperiously, and Dwight suddenly feels like he's doing something deeply wrong and unethical by not immediately coming to the aid of Horace the pug. Which is obviously ridiculous.

"I'm aware of that, and if I was sure of where there was a vet living in this building, I would have gone to them instead. But you're as good as I've got right now, so here we are," she says. The woman sighs, throwing a hand through her long blonde hair. "Animals and humans have the same basic biological processes of fucking, sleeping, breathing, shitting and eating, yes?"

There are many, many good and important reasons why the strands of veterinary science and medicine are exactly that: separate strands. But Dwight, bone-tired and in a strange and amazingly persuasive woman's flat at three o'clock in the morning, can't remember any of them. And he can't exactly argue with her logic.

"So you can at least tell me if there's something seriously wrong with him, even if you can't perform doggy brain surgery," she continues. "And you can tell me whether I need to find a 24 hour vet in this godforsaken town that I've just moved into for reasons I wish I could remember and I don't know where anything is and I can barely find my way to a Waitrose right now, so finding an open vets at this time is going to be fucking impossible but I’m not going to let him die just because I moved us to the land that time forgot!"

She breathes a jagged in and out breath, ending her rant that seemed like it was more directed at herself than him. She gives him a pleading look. "Can you please just tell me, in your _semi_ -professional opinion, if there's something really badly wrong? Please?"

Dwight finally understands her actions for what they are: a reaction to the stress of moving plus concern for a very clearly beloved dog coming to boiling point. There's no need for him to drag his heels and make her night worse, no matter how tired he is.

Plus, she's at least as distraught about Horace's potential condition as the human families he sees. Who is he to deny the help he (might) be able to give just because her loved one walks on four legs?

"You said his breathing is laboured?" Dwight clarifies.

She nods. "It's our first night sleeping here, I was sleeping at my uncle's until my new bed arrived today and he's just been like this all evening, but it's gotten worse."

"Unfortunately, breathing problems aren't that rare in flat-faced dog breeds like pugs," Dwight says, remembering reading it in a newspaper once upon a time. 

He walks over and kneels next to the chaise lounge with her. He knows nothing about medical care of dogs beyond the (very) little he's done for his family's dogs in the past, but going off her logic, he checks for the same sorts of things he would in a human patient.

"His pulse is steady and there's no sign of fever," he notes. The sigh of relief she breathes next to him is audible. "It's possibly an anxiety reaction to the stress of a new environment."

"What should I do? Do you think he needs to see a vet?"

Dwight strokes the little dog's ear. Horace looks up at him, blinking slowly. "Not immediately, give him a few days to get used to the place and if you're still concerned or he's still not himself, then make an appointment at the vets. Have you got anything he's got his scent on? Like a blanket or a bed from where you lived before?"

"Yes, hold on." She jumps up and seeks out a box in one of the corners of the room. Dwight smiles to himself when he sees it's one of two marked in black Sharpie: 'PROPERTY OF HORACE - HANDLE WITH CARE'

She pulls out a dog bone printed fleece blanket and brings it back. Dwight tucks it in around Horace's body.

"Make sure he's got plenty of water nearby, and that he knows where it is," he advises. "In the long term, it wouldn't hurt any breathing issues he might have if he lost a little weight."

The woman looks vaguely offended on Horace's behalf. "You asked for my medical opinion!" he reminds her.

"I did," she acquiesces. She smiles at him, small and genuine. Her eyes are a very clear blue this close up. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." It comes sounding out a little too soft and intimate for their level of acquaintance but she's the one sitting about an inch away from him by choice.

If he also spends a second (or ten) too long looking into her eyes, he'll put it down to exhaustion and inertia.

"I should go," Dwight says, breaking whatever type of moment they were having. The cruel mistress that is his job doesn't allow him the time to be having _moments_ with extremely pretty neighbours (who are clearly out of his league anyway) in the middle of the night.

That thought and his 6am start in mind, he stands up. She follows.

"Well, you know, since we're both awake anyway-" the woman says. "-I make a mean chocolate-orange hot cocoa... as a thank you on Horace's behalf?"

Oh, he's tempted. Sorely tempted, even. 

"I'm sorry, I can't," Dwight says finally once he's talked himself in and then out of it in the space of a minute. The woman nods, smiling as though she expected it but he still feels like he needs to excuse himself further. "I work in A&E, and I have a early start tomorrow so I shouldn't--"

"It's fine," she interrupts, stopping him with one hand. "Some other time, perhaps."

Dwight nods; he's made the practical choice but it still feels like he's making a mistake somehow by turning her down. He's still finding tempting reasons to say fuck it to his work and stay a little while longer as they drift towards her front door.

On the threshold, something suddenly occurs to him: "How did you know I was a doctor?"

The woman smiles, rolling her eyes. "The old biddy down the corridor-" Mrs Townsend, he supplies in his head. He sees her almost every time he leaves for work, and she likes baking casseroles for him when she decides he's been at the hospital one night too often for her liking. "-took it upon herself to give me a biography of everyone who has ever lived in this building."

"Mrs Townsend is definitely a character," Dwight says. She lost her husband a few years ago to cancer. He likes to visit her for a cup of tea every so often when he has the time.

The woman - how does he still not know her name?- leans casually against her door frame, her arms crossed. There's an seemingly ever-present teasing smirk on her lips that makes him feel like he should be on his toes even while he could probably sleep for a week. "She told me I was lucky to have a dishy doctor living across from me and that if I didn't end up marrying you, she would."

He raises his eyebrows. "...'Dishy'?"

"Her words, not mine," she informs him, rolling her eyes.

Dwight laughs and scratches the back of his neck, blood rushing to his face.

 "Well, on that note..." he says, stepping out into the hall. "Good night. Or morning, I suppose."

 "Good morning, doctor," she tells him. Dwight allows himself one last look at her; pink and white striped cotton pyjamas; hair in soft, blonde curtains around her face; lips pressed together in a gentle smirk that he shared but also somehow felt was at his expense. As though she knows a joke he isn't in on.

When he finally closes his door, he feels the urge to bash his head against it once again but for very different reasons than before.

This is _so_ inconvenient.

 

/

 

Two hours of restless napping and a twelve hour shift (mostly spent running on fumes and inhaling coffee at every opportunity) later, Dwight barely has the mental faculties to manage the lock on his own door.

He fully intends on dumping his stuff wherever it lands, stripping, and falling into bed for as long as he can possibly justify but before he can put that plan into action, there's a knock on his door. Three gentle knocks as opposed to the hammering of last night. Dwight hates the way he becomes ten times more alert at the sound. He's a damn fool. It's not like he even knows her name.

The doorway is empty to his surprised (and disappointment) but her door across the hall clicks shut a second later.

It's only when he happens to glance down before shutting his own door that he understands. On his doormat, there's a large Thermos flask with a note blu-tacked to the side of it a elegant script.

 

_Dr Enys,  
_ _Horace seems much happier today-- thank you so much for your advice and time so late at night. I hope you'll enjoy this chocolate orange hot cocoa as payment and thanks for your skill._

_I would tell you I'm not usually so demanding and stroppy as you saw me last night, but I wouldn't want to lie to you so soon after meeting!_

_Many thanks again,  
_ _Caroline x_

 

The grin on Dwight's face is so embarrassing that he's actually glad no one is around to see it. He opens the lid of the flask and breathes in deeply-- and of course, it smells incredible. She must have been listening out for him to come home so she could leave it there, and somehow, that's the best thing that's happened to him all day.

"Caroline," he says to himself quietly, testing out the name in his mouth, while he reads her note over again at his kitchen table with a cup of the best hot cocoa he's ever had.

He's a damn fool.


End file.
